|
•
JL. Yes - it is like
the origin of the Universe in which inner and outer are one.
RA. Yes, I like
something that Mozart wrote "my soul opened out as it were into the
infinite; the deep that my own struggle had opened up within my being,
answered by the unfathomable deep without, reaching beyond the stars. I
stood along with him who had made me and felt the perfect union of my
spirit with his. It was like the effect of some orchestra when all the
separate notes have melted into one swelling harmony. The darkness held
a presence, I could not anymore have doubted that he was there, than I
was".
JL. During the 1970's
you did some more teaching this time at the Beaford Centre. I remember
you said when you were teaching in Kent that you were given generous
space to teach those not taking formal examinations to "see". Can you
say a little more about this "seeing"?
RA I think the
structure of examinations create a beast of immense proportions. This
beast, once anyone has been touched by it, always raises it's head and
blocks any real childlike seeing. If I may deviate away from the arts
to food for a moment, a parallel can be seen here. The Farmer, to pass
his examination, in other words to receive monies to live, has been
shown the beast of production - everything from a grain to a pig must be
produced in quantity. The outside is the only part considered - what it
weighs on the scales. Well it was a relief to know that at the centre,
these mature students didn't have to pander to the beast. Now I could
use techniques either to slip by the beast, dissolve it away completely
- or at least with a bit of luck, making it possible for some to have a
quick look over its hairy shoulder at inimitable vistas.
JL. How did you set
about this rather Herculean task.
RA. The first disarming approach was to say - I have not
come here to teach you how to paint, (which when you think about it must
have been rather a shock as they had all spent considerable amounts of
money purchasing paint, brushes and canvasses), rather I have come to
teach or show/guide you to "see" again.
JL. Was it
successful?
RA. Yes - I think they must have enjoyed this medicine as one class at the beginning of the term expanded into two classes by the end of ten weeks. Later I was invited by the Director of Art Education for Devon, to talk to teachers about my formula.
JL. You were 41 in
1979, as I understand it your preoccupation, your obsession with the
WOOD THEME started to lessen.
RA. Yes.
JL. I do not for a
moment suggest there is a lessening of intensity about the images but
you have said before that they have less compelling urgency to create
them.
RA. Quite.
JL. But in front of
us here we have another painting - WATERFALL and OAK TREE in which,
although there is a waterfall and oak tree and indeed many of the
thematic elements that one is familiar with in the woods, there is I
think at least technically, a fundamental change in your approach.
RA. YES.
JL. And this is
substantiated in a whole series of paintings which are characterised by
a flame like flickering quality across two surfaces of the painting.
Could you tell me something about what was happening about this time?
RA. Yes - I was less
concerned with an image of concrete reality than with abstracting from
the early woods a new autonomous reality created directly by the
spirit. In other words the sort of reality of the tree has melted into
the sky into sunlight and into the rocks. So it is a little more
difficult to find where one ends and another begins. Does that ----
JL. Well can I ask
you ----?
RA. But you have
still got the structure in the picture there not just a kind of a mass
of flickering light - you know there is that old Railway carriage window
frame holding it together as a whole.
JL. Many Christian
mystics and physicists - Fritjof Capra for instance - have shown a
convergence of thought here, underlying the surface appearance of
reality, there is certainly another reality which is characterised by
its interrelationships and unity - Now why? Because I think this
picture expresses some of that, why ten years, a decade after your
vision should you have returned to its significance. Why should you
return ten years after the event to the meaning of that vision on the
night that you described, in the 1960s?
RA. You mean in more
spiritual reality?
JL. Yes, these
paintings that we have here are a kind of restatement of the primary
significance of that event.
RA It is a very good
point John - I've no actual - no one lit a candle for me and said lets
have a birthday party - this is the day hat they will change
JL. No.
RA. and appear in a
new form no I cannot go any further than that, they just appeared.
JL. Do you sometimes get the feeling Gustaff Marler the composer said "I do not compose I am composed" meaning, I think and this is an experience that many artists have felt, meaning that they have no control of the work they do, they are a conduit.
RA. Excellent, yes.
JL Did you feel that?
RA. Yes.
JL. At the time?
RA YES - at the
beginning of our talk you said to me "was it intuitional or was it
something you had actually read about".
JL. Yes.
RA. There again, it
is that blossoming out, it comes out from nowhere as it were, it is
everywhere and yet nowhere you cannot actually pin it down. All art if
it is to be meaningful must be a search - like the search for the Holy
Grail, which is conducted through the practice of producing outer
visible revelations of inner invisible realizations. For me it is a
magic instrument for looking into the qualities of life - those
qualities that lie outside the area of proof and exact scientific
measurement.
• |
